Investigators with the San Diego County District Attorney's Office leave the San Diego home of contractor Henry Amigable with boxes of documents shortly before 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2011.
— Ashly McGlone

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Months of investigation into potential corruption at Sweetwater schools and Southwestern College prompted the District Attorney’s Office to execute search warrants Tuesday at the homes of six sitting and past officials.

Also searched was the holiday-decorated home of Henry Amigable, a construction contractor who has worked for both districts.

The searches began early and went on throughout the day at residences from Bonita to Escondido. Investigators spent hours at each site, carting away computers and boxes of documents and declining to comment on the unfolding criminal case. No one was arrested.

One of the first places to be searched was the National City home of Sweetwater Union High School District board member Pearl Quiñones, with agents arriving at the East Sixth Street residence as early as 8:30 a.m.

Quiñones sat on the living-room sofa flanked by two agents as investigators boxed up evidence and carried it out to waiting vehicles. She declined to comment through an investigator.

Later in the day, investigators executed search warrants at the homes of Sweetwater trustees Arlie Ricasa and Bertha Lopez.

“The district attorney is doing their job and I don’t have anything to hide,” Lopez said. “That is the bottom line.”

Five District Attorney’s Office staffers entered Ricasa’s home on Sunny Crest Lane in Bonita even though she was not home at the time. Ricasa arrived at about 1:40 p.m. She said she didn’t know why investigators were there or what they might be seeking.

Absent from the list of those whose homes were searched was Jesus Gandara, the former Sweetwater superintendent who was fired by the board in June amid a series of stories by The Watchdog. Several focused on the district’s interactions with contractors.

The District Attorney’s Office declined to discuss details of the searches, beyond confirming for the first time that it was conducting a criminal probe.

Search warrants typically are signed by a judge only after investigators sign affidavits laying out their case for why they should be permitted inside the home of a suspect or witness.

The affidavits relied on by the District Attorney’s Office were sealed by the court for 10 days. Typically, they would be available for public scrutiny sometime next week.

Those targeted for raids share a web of connections, tied to construction bond measures approved by voters within the two districts.

Amigable works for Echo Pacific Construction, which has won contracts with Southwestern and Sweetwater. He did not return messages left at his home and on his cellphone.

Amigable previously worked as a senior executive at Gilbane Building Co. at the time it won construction-management work for Proposition O, the $644 million bond measure Sweetwater voters passed in 2006.

Echo Pacific was given a $4 million Southwestern contract three weeks after it went on a Napa Valley wine weekend with college officials — a getaway won at auction for $15,000, benefiting a scholarship fund. Amigable went on the trip, which was the subject of a Watchdog story last year. Nicholas Alioto, then Southwestern’s vice president for business and financial affairs, also went.